Southwest Chief

Name	Southwest Chief
Start	Los Angeles
End	Chicago
Distance	2,265 Miles
Duration	43 Hours
Creation	1936 by Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, known as “The Train of the Stars”!

August 25

We are off on our last multi-night segment of the trip! (Don’t worry, we still have an overnight from Chicago to DC.) The route starts out along the Los Angeles River. While this is certainly not the image I have in my mind of the archetypal “river”, it nevertheless looked familiar. I checked online and it is, in fact, the location of the Thunder Road race at the end of Grease!

We then passed through San Bernardino before nightfall.

Though we no longer have a roomette with complimentary meals, the mealtime views are still breathtaking.

Apparently we also rode passed the South Fire, but we did not see anything and Amtrak does not seem to be impacted.

There are some beautiful sights to be seen on this trip, but many are set for early in the morning tomorrow. Digging up our trusty old day/night map, we should be able to see bits of Arizona with daylight. Fingers crossed!

August 26

We started the day off with another beautiful sunrise, this time in Arizona.

The day/night map was right again: we passed through most of Arizona during the night and crossed into New Mexico shortly after sunrise. We were expecting beautiful views given what we saw yesterday, and we were not disappointed!

This time through New Mexico we passed through Albuquerque, and we stopped there for about half an hour giving us time to run off of the train and pick up a fresh dinner!

We also made a quick stop in Las Vegas, though we didn’t have time to leave the train.

Later in the afternoon we crossed into Colorado, though not the “canyonous” part we traveled through on the California Zephyr. Instead, we passed through the Front Range and saw some bison.

And we ended the day with yet another breathtaking sunset!

August 27

We slept through most of Kansas and woke up in Kansas City. Technically we saw the Kansas side, so that counts, but the station itself was in Missouri. While in Kansas City, DEA agents boarded the train and had dogs sniff our bags. Mine had something of interest to the dog, so they had to search it. Lots of excitement for 6am! (It’s a good thing mine was flagged because we’ve been storing everything in Terri’s bag!)

Outside of Kansas City, we crossed the Missouri River. While the section of the river we crossed had no administrative significance, parts of the river serve as the border between Kansas and Missouri.

For most of our travels through Missouri, I finished reading up on the history and creation of Amtrak (and finally added the section to the main page). We eventually crossed the Des Moines River, which is the boarder between Missouri and Iowa, but I completely missed it as I was engrossed in my book (it was a small one anyway and we were only in Iowa for a little bit). The big crossing came shortly after when we encountered the Mississippi River for the fourth time (fifth if you count the river boat) as we went from Iowa to Illinois.

This part of the trip had us going through lots of farmland. While not as aesthetically diverse as other parts of the trip, I still wanted to take a short video (and not just to have a place holder for the blog…). Part of the reason I took this trip was to see America. While we have seen some of our crown jewels, I think there is also beauty in seeing and appreciating the bits in between. (Terri did not agree and napped instead.)

Finally, we arrived in Chicago for the third time this trip! This time around we walked down to Lake Michigan before hopping on the next train. As we waited in the station, we heard announcements about the City of New Orleans (the train we took the last time we were here) and how they are canceling all stops south of Memphis. The prospect of a hurricane hitting New Orleans on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is absolutely devastating. We are grateful to have gotten to take the train and safely leave the area and feel so privileged that the only hiccup in our trip was the canceled Coast Starlight due to wildfire.

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